Probably most of us experience worry, stress and various kinds of anxiety to some extent, but creative people may be especially vulnerable to these mood and health challenges.

As psychologist and creativity coach Eric Maisel notes, “Life produces stress, the artistic personality produces additional stress, creating produces even more stress, and living the artist’s life is the topper!”

But, he suggests, “We can normalize or even reframe many demands as opportunities, and when we do, the associated stress vanishes. If you are holding it as lovely to make three calls today to gallery owners instead of as something dreadful that you wish you could avoid at all costs, you have changed the demand characteristic of the situation to one of opportunity.”

“We constantly worry whether other people like us, how they feel about us and think of us and we never seem to worry too much about how our own words impact us. You are the person who spends the most time with yourself and most times, you also listen to yourself.

“What you tell yourself, how you speak, and the tone you use set up the environment in which you must function…the tone and language you choose become part of you and greatly influence the way you feel about yourself and how you treat yourself.”

Leahy offers six tips you can use to cope with worry, stress and anxiety – here are some excerpts:

1. Identify productive and unproductive worry

“First, determine whether your worries will help you find practical solutions to a dilemma.” …

2. Keep an appointment with your worries

“Write down your unproductive worries throughout the day and set aside a chunk of time, say 6 to 6:30 p.m., dedicated specifically to thinking about them.” …

3. Learn to accept uncertainty

“Worriers have a hard time accepting they can never have complete control in their lives…quietly repeating a worry for 20 minutes reduces its power.” …

For more details on these and other tips, see the article Why We Worry by Victoria Stern – which also includes excerpts from The Worry Domains Questionnaire, a self-test on how much you worry and about what.

~ ~ ~

Creative intellect and anxiety

Former anxiety sufferer and anxiety program developer Charles Linden writes that his research “shows us that anxiety sufferers all share a superior level of creative intellect.

“This may not be experienced as academic prowess, but as a distinct range of both physical and mental attributes effecting creativity, emotional sensitivity and clarity, eccentricity, creative energy and drive…”

From his article “Creative intellect as a marker for genetic predisposition to high anxiety conditions.”

A clinical psychologist, professor and well-being researcher, Todd Kashdan addresses how happiness and “unwanted” emotions affect creative thinking and overall well-being in his book “The Upside of Your Dark Side” – an admittedly ‘provocative’ title that may bring to mind Darth Vader.

What some may label “negative” emotions and ideas are what psychologist Carl Jung and others identify as part of the Shadow Self, which may in varying degrees be shut away from our awareness by active suppression or repression and just not paying attention.

But as artists and others realize, our inner depths – this wealth of emotional and imaginational material – can provide material for creative expression.

“Americans are not fans of anger, sadness, guilt, and other negative emotions. Just take a tour of the bookstore aisles and you’ll see countless titles about positivity and happiness.

“We invite you to take a closer look. We think that you can gain more from accessing the full range of your emotions. You don’t have to avoid discomfort to live a meaningful and engaging life. In fact, a bit of occasional anxiety or guilt can propel you to do great things.”

In a post about Kashdan’s book, Greg Lukianoff notes “The authors state, ‘To be open and receptive to creative ideas, we need to be open and receptive to discomfort.’

“This is well-established and at least nominally uncontroversial. I say nominally, however, because the authors point out that everyone knows to say that they value creativity, but psychological research indicates that people are far less comfortable with creativity in practice than they are in theory.

“Every emotion is useful. Even the ones we think of as negative, including the painful ones.”

It provides research in support of what the authors call “emotional, social, and mental agility” – such as this intriguing study:

“Workers who are in a bad mood in the morning but shift to a good mood in the afternoon are more engrossed in their work than their counterparts who were happy all day.

“With regard to creativity, researchers have found that the ideas suggested by folks who experience both negative and positive moods are judged as 9 percent more creative than ideas put forward by happy people; at work, the stress associated with challenges appears to promote motivation.

“Ronald Bedlow and his colleagues, who conducted this last study on worker involvement, described their discovery this way:

“We argue that it is the balance of being able to endure phases of negative affect and then engage in a shift to positive affect that is adaptive. Minimization of negative experiences and suppression of negative affect are functional neither for work motivation nor for personal development.”

“Swept up by the deeper states of play, one feels balanced, creative, focused…”

Diane Ackerman is a poet, essayist and naturalist who has taught at a number of universities, including Columbia and Cornell. In her book “Deep Play” she talks about being able to “play anywhere that is set off from reality, whether it be a playground, a field, a church or a garage.

“Deep play doesn’t have to do with an activity, like shallow play. It has to do with attitude or an extraordinarily intense state…”

This is, she notes, a way to experience flow, which enhances creative work:

“Swept up by the deeper states of play, one feels balanced, creative, focused… Deep play is an absence of mental noise — liberating, soothing, and exciting. It means no analysis, no explanation, no promises, no goals, no worries. You are completely open to the drama of life that may unfold.”

In her article Playfulness and creativity, Helen Barclay notes a bottlenose dolphin “was observed generating bubbles to drive fish to the surface so it could more easily catch them.”

She adds, “The act of play has been observed and researched extensively across a wide range of animals – including humans. Research suggests that playfulness is an important developer of creative ability.”

She refers to research in the UK which “investigated how people think about themselves. The people who characterised themselves as playful also thought of themselves as creative, and this self-assessment was validated with a creativity test. Those who thought of themselves as playful performed significantly better compared to those who thought of themselves as less playful.”

Barclay is part of the team of the innovation consultancy Inventium. Part of their ‘About’ statement notes: “Some people run innovation as ‘creativity’ workshops – we think this is really dangerous because while you might have fun, you may not necessarily end up with profitable results. So for us, we combine the fun (let’s face it – how can innovation not be fun?) and ensure we get results that will drive a commercial outcome for our client.”

The company site says it provides “a stack of practical innovation tools that have driven remarkable results in organizations such as Coca-Cola Amatil, Red Bull, LEGO, Deloitte, Heinz, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and many others.”

“An artist must actively caress wonder: for fascination, like the desire to play, can be eradicated by the rigors of living.” Eric Maisel

“There is a myth, common in American culture, that work and play are entirely separate activities.” Laura Seargeant Richardson, a principal designer at frog design. She “specializes in the emotional, social, participatory and future design of products and environments.”

“I started out as a painter, and then painting led to cinema…Then cinema led to so many different areas…photography, music . . . Furniture is also a big love of mine…Then I got into lithography…And I’ve always been painting along the way, as well as doing drawings and watercolors…There are just so many things out there for us to do.”

Emilie Wapnick “helps multipotentialites integrate ALL of their interests into their lives. Unable to settle on one path herself, Emilie studied music, art, film production and law, graduating from the Law Faculty at McGill University.”

In a post on her site, she notes “the idea of the multipotentialite isn’t a new one. There are several other terms that are used to describe people with interests ranging multiple disciplines including:

“While detailed knowledge of a single area once guaranteed success, today the top rewards go to those who can operate with equal aplomb in starkly different realms. I call these people ‘boundary crossers’.”

From her post ‘Is “Multipotentialite” a Real Thing? Is it Really Okay to Be this Way?’

Michelle Nickolaisen is a “freelance writer and business owner…writes about online business and marketing for agencies and companies, while showing freelancers how to be more productive and organized.”

Nickolaisen and Wapnick have collaborated on projects to support multitalented creators and entrepreneurs, including:

“Would I have to settle on a ‘practical job’ and pursue my various passions on the side or choose among my interests and just commit to one thing?

“Both options made me my heart ache… I knew I could be doing more– that I had more to offer the world. Renaissance Business is the story of how I brought all of my interests together, and how you can do the same.”

Multitalented people often express stimulating perspectives on realizing their creative abilities and passions. Here are comments from three well-known artists.

Xavier Dolan has credits including: Actor, Writer, Producer, Costume designer, and at age 25 has directed five feature films.

He has said “I don’t know that I’m being prolific, I’m just responding, I’m being authentic and I’m just listening to my needs in terms of expression.” …

“I do feel that technically I’m still a neophyte, and that scares me. But I am a nerd, I learn fast, I’m passionate and I’m curious. I don’t doubt myself, but I have my doubts.”

In her interview with Dolan, actor Jessica Chastain asks: “Do you feel that with your writing and directing and acting you can delve into what it was like to be an 8-year-old kid watching Titanic and trying to figure out their sexuality? Is it a way for you to explore that within yourself?”

Dolan responds: “I think it’s a way to channel rage. I was a very violent kid. I think movies and writing and art have been a way of channeling this. But I have this will to defend people—it can be all sorts of people.”

~ ~ ~

Actor Jessica Lange is also a published photographer.

“What I love about photography, and it’s the same thing I love about acting, really, is that it forces you right into the moment, where you can’t be distracted, where you can’t be thinking about other things, or ahead of yourself or behind yourself.”

“I find photography a most mysterious process—capturing that moment in time and space, elusive and fleeting, and crystallizing it.

“You have made a photograph. It is its own thing now. To me, that is thrilling.”

“The heat and emotion to be generated, like the physical stamina to be supplied, are part of an actor’s life. Whatever was left over, whatever surged forth despite myself, and whatever I had hoped for, I then put down on paper.

“None of it is definitive; it’s just a record—a fleeting and subjective perception—of one moment in life. Technique simply came with the desire to paint, without preconceptions.”

]]>http://blogs.psychcentral.com/creative-mind/2015/01/three-creative-minds-dolan-lange-binoche/feed/0Creative People, Mental Health, Misdiagnosishttp://blogs.psychcentral.com/creative-mind/2015/01/creative-people-mental-health-misdiagnosis/
http://blogs.psychcentral.com/creative-mind/2015/01/creative-people-mental-health-misdiagnosis/#commentsSat, 24 Jan 2015 02:28:38 +0000http://blogs.psychcentral.com/creative-mind/?p=2907A full list of talented and creative people who suffer anxiety, depression and other mental health challenges, would, of course, be limitless; being creative, gifted and talented does not exempt any of us from those problems.

Novelist Patricia Cornwell is one example of an artist who has experienced mental health issues.

She comments:

“I’ve had my own difficulties. My wiring’s not perfect and there are ways that you can stabilise that. I have certain things that run in my own ancestry.

“It’s not unusual for great artistic people to have bipolar disorder, for example…The diagnosis goes back and forth but I’m pretty sure that I am…I take a mood stabiliser.”

But many health professionals may label attributes of giftedness negatively, as psychiatric problems or pathologies.

That is not to say high ability people never experience mental illness, of course, but those of us who feel emotional intensities, existential depression and other experiences related to giftedness, may sometimes judge ourselves as “crazy” or disordered, even though we are not.

Of course, it can be tricky to discriminate illness from attribute.

Kathleen Noble, PhD, is a Professor and Assistant Director of the Early Entrance Program, University of Washington in Seattle, where she also has a private practice as a psychologist, working with gifted women.

In our interview, she said, “A number of my gifted clients are psychic or have psychic abilities. That’s only one place they might get pathologized.

“There are a number of qualities that gifted women possess that can easily get mislabeled and misdiagnosed… I have seen, particularly in adolescents, that gifted girls who are very high energy and high verbal are often punished by teachers for those qualities, and the qualities are then negatively represented, rather than positively acknowledged.”

“They are then given medication and/or counseling to change their way of being so that they will be more acceptable within the school, the family, or the neighborhood, or so that they will be more content with themselves and their situation.

“The tragedy for these mistakenly diagnosed children and adults is that they receive needless stigmatizing labels that harm their sense of self and result in treatment that is both unnecessary and even harmful to them, their families, and society.”

“I asked myself these questions as I began a journey back to a drug-free life after years on anti-depressants and other medications.”

She adds, “People who are creative and gifted often don’t fit within society’s common definitions of ‘normal.’

“And while some may embrace their uniqueness, others, like myself, may struggle for years trying to change themselves in order to fit in.”

~ ~ ~

Among other writers and mental health professionals who agree with this kind of perspective, Peter D. Kramer, author of Listening to Prozac, notes there is an ever-diminishing concept of ‘normal.’

Psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman comments:

“I do believe that If the mental processes associated with psychosis were evaporated entirely from this world, art would suck.

“But so would a lot of other things that require imagination.”

In his book Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined, Kaufman writes about many topics related to creative people, and describes the painful and disruptive consequences of having been labeled as learning disabled when he was a child.

His experience was the result of several ear infections that had impeded his hearing, resulting in a central auditory processing disorder that interfered with his understanding of speech.

Article: Challenged By Being So Smart – Psychologist and creativity coach Eric Maisel says that ‘smart’ people often experience characteristic challenges including “difficulties with society and the world, issues at work, challenges with your personality and your racing brain, and special meaning problems.”

Article: Eric Maisel on anxiety and developing creativity.“Only a small percentage of creative people work as often or as deeply as, by all rights, they might be expected to work. What stops them? Anxiety or some face of anxiety like doubt, worry, or fear… anxiety is the great silencer of the creative person.”

“In the creative process every human being is confronted with doubts and contradictions and flaws…”

Acclaimed for his films including “Amores Perros,” “Babel” and “21 Grams,” Alejandro González Iñárritu has earned a number of award nominations for directing and co-writing “Birdman.”

In a theatre, we can enjoy the results of sometimes hundreds of talented people collaborating on making a movie, but there may be many years of often messy and emotionally challenging creative process that goes into getting a film actually produced and released. Iñárritu has made a number of interesting comments about that process.

In an interview for Film Comment (the official publication of the Film Society of Lincoln Center), writer Steven Mears asks him:

“This is a film about the insecurities that plague artists. The voice of Birdman articulates the anxieties of Michael Keaton’s character. Do you have a Birdman of your own?”

Iñárritu: “Yeah, absolutely. A vulture, I would say!” [Laughs]

Mears: “Has he ever talked you out of anything you wanted to do?”

Iñárritu: “Yeah. You know, in the creative process I think every human being is confronted with doubts and contradictions and flaws . . . and that’s part of it. That’s the deal of it. That’s the complexity of it.

“Because it’s very contradictory and that’s the way it should be, I guess — to move two steps forward and one back. And so it’s a torturous process, sometimes more for some than others, but no matter who you are you have to have that.”

[See more on insecurity below.]

Iñárritu comments on the personal meaning of filmmaking:

“All the themes that the film navigates are themes that are really close to me, personally… It’s nothing I observe intellectually or detached from — I’m part of that discussion. I’m part of the problem, maybe.

“But I think that’s why it’s such an important and incredible journey for me, to be able to exorcise many of those thoughts that I have, through this story and these characters, because I empathize with all of them!”

In another article, Iñárritu commented that “Birdman” was a film “that took a lot of courage to make. I knew that I was challenging the conventions, and I knew that sometimes that can come with a high cost to many people – and that’s why people were scared to make it. But I think if we don’t challenge conventions and we are not brave in that sense, then we will be stuck in cinema.”

Many people, even with exceptional talents, can feel insecure and struggle with unhealthy self-esteem, or impostor feelings.

One example: Amy Adams admits, “I was insecure long before I declared I was an actress.”

Psychologist Anne Paris says “We cannot create in a vacuum of isolation: we are helped along in the creative process by certain kinds of emotional support from others that help us to be at our best and to realize our full potentials.”

What we call fear may really be excitement: emotional and physiological arousal. Creativity coach and author Eric Maisel notes it can sometimes be hard to distinguish nervous tension from anxiety or fear:

“Part of the confusion is that ‘life energy’ in the form of hormones like adrenaline are necessary, so it is easy to confuse ‘enthusiasm’ with ‘anxiety,’ since both have a real (and similar) hormonal edge to them.”

Robert Maurer, a UCLA clinical psychologist, notes, “You publish your first novel, does that make fear go away? No. So your skill at being able to nourish yourself and give yourself permission to make mistakes and learn from them is your single greatest attribute as an artist and as a human being.”

Research by Elaine Aron and a number of her colleagues indicates there are brain differences that may explain these kinds of subtle perceptions.

A press release about a research paper explains:

“Visual images are transformed into thoughts about those images when the brain associates the images with input from other senses, as well as with emotional reactions.

“This requires some attention, which is often motivated by emotions and is especially critical for noticing small changes. The investigators had 16 participants compare a photograph of a visual scene with a preceding scene, and asked them to indicate with a button press whether or not the scene had changed.

“Scenes differed in whether the changes were obvious or subtle, and in how quickly they were presented. Sensitive persons looked at the scenes that had the subtle differences for a longer time than did non-sensitive persons, and showed significantly greater activation in brain areas involved in associating visual input with other input to the brain and with visual attention (i.e., right claustrum; left occipito-temporal; bilateral temporal, medial, and posterior parietal regions).

“These areas are not simply used for vision itself, but for a deeper processing of input.”

The research paper concluded that highly sensitive people “process sensory information more elaborately than individuals low in SPS, that is, with a greater attention to detail and with more attention to subtleties. Such ‘more elaborate processing’ is, we postulate, related to a greater degree of integration of various components of the neurological processes underlying visual processing.”

In the 1960s, paintings of “sad-eyed children,” massively reproduced in posters and cards, became possibly the best-selling art in the world for a time, thanks to the tireless marketing by Walter Keane of “his” work. The “big eyes” images were owned by celebrities and hung in many permanent collections.

But Walter Keane was a fraud and plagiarist: the art was actually created by his wife Margaret Keane.

“After years of silence, Margaret finally told a radio audience in 1970 that she, in fact, had painted all those wide-eyed waifs.”

“A trial jury awarded her $4 million for the emotional distress and damaged reputation she had suffered because of Walter’s false statements.”

Amy Adams portrays Margaret in the movie “Big Eyes” and comments about her meetings with the painter:

“She still had a sense of guilt for her part in it. That was something that I really responded to because she says, ‘Well, I went along with it and I did lie. A lot.’

“Whatever the reasons were, she still admits that she lied,” said Adams. “She felt very manipulated, but she never phrased it like, ‘I don’t know why Walter did this to me.’ She says, ‘I don’t understand how I put up with this. How I went along with it for so long.’”

Adams had to improvise to create the voice of Margaret in the movie.

“I won’t say who it is, but there is a woman in my life who is quiet and I’m terrified of her…she’s from Texas and she is steely strong but very, very shy, very quiet,” said Adams. “She doesn’t talk loud, but boy when she talks, I listen.”

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” ― Albert Einstein

Stories, perhaps especially the more elaborate and potent examples of fantasy and fairytale, can do more than entertain: they can reveal how others, and ourselves, manage being human. And how we can do better at it.

The movie “Into the Woods” intertwines several classic fairy tales, with a screenplay by James Lapine, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, based on their musical which debuted in 1986.

Narrator in the movie: “And it came to pass, all that seemed wrong was now right, the kingdoms were filled with joy, and those who deserved to were certain to live a long and happy life.”

Of course, many stories offer that kind of comforting assurance, but the more enduring ones provide much more depth.

James Lapine notes he had dedicated the libretto to his baby daughter. He recalls in an article about creating the movie on his earlier work on the musical:

“I was chatting with a friend as her young daughter was having dinner. Actually, more like playing with her dinner, most of which was going everywhere but in her mouth. I casually asked my pal if teaching her kid table manners was going to be important for her.

“She looked at me: ‘James, I just hope I can teach this kid the difference between right and wrong.’ That resonated with me when I wrote our show and comes back to me now. How well have I taught my child and what world have I — have all of us — left behind for our children?”

One of the main stories is Cinderella. Anna Kendrick portrays her so well in the movie, both singing and acting. She comments that her character represents inner and outer challenges many women face.

“She’s thinking about escaping a home of abuse and neglect and trying to find validation and love literally for the first time in her life. What’s extraordinary is she’s brave enough to say, ‘I deserve better.’ She comes from the worst situation, and we as women have seen — publicly and in our own lives — other women who stay in bad relationships because they think it’s the best they can do.”

Book: Into the Woods (movie tie-in edition) by Stephen Sondheim, James Lapine.

Historian, critic, novelist and short story writer Marina Warner (a Fellow at Oxford, among other credits) comments about how meaningful these forms of story can be:

“Impossible – absurd – enchantments define fairytale as a form of storytelling, but the magic also gives expression to thought-experiments: the wicked fairy turning out to be capable of love, the Frozen princess thawed into humanity by her heroic sister’s staunchness and love. Fairytale is a country of the mind made by imagery…”